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Above: Maya in "At Land"
She found ways to mold space and time, in visual maps to her invented worlds like "At Land" and "The Very Eye of Night."
Her parents fled the Russian Revolution, and wound up in America. The Derenkowskis had no idea their little Eleanora would grow up to be a socialist and voodoo priestess, in the Greenwich Village section of New York City!
Her first husband, Alexander Hammid, was a successful photographer. He trained her in camerawork and collaborated on her earliest filmic efforts. Their first and best-known was "Meshes of the Afternoon," made in 1943.
Later, Deren was associated with the Katherine Dunham dance troupe. She produced films with members of that group, including Antony Tudor. "Ritual in Transfigured Time" incorporated everyday movements into dancelike arrangemen ts, with the help of slow-motion effects.
After being granted the first film-related Guggenheim fellowship, she traveled to Haiti to study local religious practices. Deren not only wrote a respected book on the subject, "Divine Horsemen," she became a convert to Voodoun as well.
She met Teiji Ito when he was a fifteen year old runaway. They later married, and he stayed with her until her death in 1961. He wrote musical scores for her projects; then he completed her last film, "Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti," posthu mously. His third wife, Cherel Ito, became executor of the Deren collection.
Another experimental filmmaker, Stan Brakhage, was lucky enough to take advantage of Deren's hospitality for a few months during the late 1950s. The following excerpt is from one of his books. It recounts the wedding of Geoffrey Holder, over which Deren was supposed to preside. When certain publicity hounds expressed disdain for the ritual objects she had chosen for the ceremony, Brakhage could only marvel at her reaction:
This wasn't a little luncheon icebox - it was a standard-sized kitchen refrigerator....I was...watching her hurl that thing about four feet across the room - and then everything else in the kitchen started flying.
***
As it was explained to me, she was possessed by Papa-Loco, the Haitian god....
One of the Haitians came and said, "Maya wants you." I was, frankly, terrified.
....all I could think was that this was my only suit and it was on fire....words were said in a voice that I cannot imagine as Maya's.
***
At the end of this blood-chilling chant, I was informed that I had been blessed by Papa-Loco...
Note: the preceding selection was taken from "Film At Wit's End: Eight Avant-Garde Filmmakers" by Stan Brakhage, published by Documentext/McPherson & Co., NY. Copyright 1989 by Stan Brakhage, reprinted by permission from the publisher. All rights rese rved.
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